


Seeing Red: A Zombie Au

by Donotquestionme



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M, Zombie AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7854151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donotquestionme/pseuds/Donotquestionme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bog is a zombie who's lost his humanity. Marianne tries to help him recover his sanity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Chapter Title: "The Very Small Place"

_Flesh. Red. Meat. Hunger. Blood. Meat._

Yes, yes we’re all very aware of your wants at this point _,_ Bog thought at himself, as if his instincts could hear him.

The persistent thoughts and ever-growing hunger were taking up more and more of his mind with each passing day. Or, what must have been days, weeks, maybe even months, he didn’t know.  There were no holes in the face of the metal locker he’d been trapped in for what felt like an eternity. No way to tell the passage of time. Every hour was as pitch black as the last.

At first he’d tried to break out, of course, but they’d put something heavy in front of the locker door and, despite what some people would have you believe, being undead lead more to being perpetually weak and sickly than it did to gaining incredible superhuman strength.  Whatever was blocking his escape was far too heavy and he far too weak. He was trapped.

He’d tried screaming for help. He’d screamed for hours, maybe even days, but no one came. He had no idea where he was but it was probably miles from civilization where no one would ever be able to hear him. Rescue, then, was not a likely possibility either.

Eventually he’d resigned himself to it. He was trapped without food and, without meat to satisfy his supernatural hunger, he’d go feral. No doubt this was the plan of whoever had jumped him and stuffed him in the locker to begin with.

Society didn’t think highly of zombies like Bog and many got a sick thrill from forcing them to lose their humanity, as if it proved some kind of point that zombies were too dangerous to live amongst normal people, too quick to lose control. Zombies going missing and turning up weeks later, completely feral, was all too common of an occurrence.

With a steady supply of raw meat to keep their hunger appeased, zombies like himself could lead some semblance of a normal life. They ate, they slept, they aged, they had jobs, families. They may as well have been human.

Take away that supply, however, and that hunger would consume them, making them lose all traces of their former humanity and turning them into the shambling monsters of Hollywood horror films. They would no longer need sleep, they’d be unable to stomach anything that wasn’t meat, and they lost any semblance of being alive, losing any free will or higher thought and becoming slaves to their craving for flesh.

Bog had been grabbed walking home from the store, in broad daylight no less. The whole thing was a blur. Between how fast it had happened and how hard it was getting for him to think or remember anything, he had very little clear recollection of exactly how he’d ended up in his current predicament. All he knew is that he’d been walking down the street, then his next memory was being forced into this locker. If he'd gotten a look at their face (faces?) he couldn’t remember it now.

They’d probably had a stun gun and just put him out. Something about zombie physiology made their nervous systems very sensitive to electric pulses and it had been quickly discovered that a moderate zap from the right frequency would knock them out cold, instantaneously. The fact that they were so easily disabled was the only reason they were allowed to mingle with human society. Stun guns were easy enough to get a hold of and zombies were easily identified by the metal bracelet each one was required to wear around their right wrist. This made the threat zombies posed to society minimal and made most people comfortable enough to at least tolerate their presence.

Of course it also made violence against zombies laughably easy. There was no way to hide what they were and they simply had no way to defend themselves against the effects of a stun gun. If someone had it out for them, there was next to nothing they could do about it.

Once he’d resigned himself to his fate, Bog found himself morbidly curious about just how it would happen. Would his mind go slowly, with him fully aware of his loss of sanity but helpless to stop it? Or would it happen all at once? Would feel himself turning into a mindless beast?  Or would the hunger take him over like some outside presence, forcing his consciousness out of his own mind?

It turned out to be an odd mix of both. The hunger grew steadily overall, but would also sometimes consume him quickly and completely. It felt like his mind was changing, but also felt almost like a separate entity from himself shared a mind with him.

He’d come to think of it as something like an aggravating, aggressive roommate he was forced to share a space with. Snidely commenting in his head at those thoughts as though they were made by someone else entirely was certainly easier than accepting that they were coming from his own mind and would soon be all he was left with. Easier than thinking about how, slowly, as time went on and on…he felt himself starting to agree with them.

 _Blood. Flesh. Red. Meat_. They begged.

You’re sounding like a broken record there, old friend. Ever consider getting some new material?

_Blood. Red. Red. Red. Flesh. Hunger._

Apparently not.

\--

As time passed, Bog could feel his “roommate” taking up more and more space in his head until the part of himself that was still rational and sane was being pushed out.

It had terrified him at first, but now the fear had faded to a grim acceptance. It was possible that he didn’t have the mental capacity for fear left. He’d lost the ability to speak or willfully control any of his movements, so it wasn’t exactly a stretch. Trying to think or feel anything was growing harder.

Every time anything set off his instincts, like a sudden sound or an unfamiliar smell, the feral side of him would swell, forcing out any rational thought in its frenzy of ‘Meat meat meat!’ but it would eventually fade and there would be enough room for Bog in his own mind. His sanity would return like the tide coming back in. Each time, however, less and less of him would come back and it took longer and longer for it to do so. He didn’t have much time left.

He’d wished he gotten the chance to say goodbye to Marianne.

Was she still looking for him? he wondered. Or had she given up? Maybe she’d moved on by now; fallen in love with someone who wasn’t mostly dead. He wasn’t sure if the idea was comforting or distressing. He didn’t really have the mental wherewithal left to puzzle it out anymore and even his thoughts of Marianne were starting to be steadily pushed out of his mind.

He tried to hold on to them as best he could. If he only had a limited number of human thoughts left, he’d really like them to be of her.

His tough girl, who loved him despite what he was, who didn’t care if other people disapproved, who looked at him like he was something worth her love, as beautiful and perfect as she was, who made him feel more alive than he had since he’d died.

Yes, if he got to choose a last thought, it should really be of her.

\---

Time kept passing. Bog didn’t know how much. It was impossible to tell.

He felt his sanity fade in and out like the in and out of breath and he couldn’t tell if he was being forced out or if the two parts of his mind were just finally merging into one. He couldn’t find it in him to care about it either way.

He hadn’t been able to keep thinking of Marianne. Her face was a blur in his mind. All his memories were.

It felt oddly like trying not to fall asleep when one was beyond tired. He’d have a moment of clarity, just long enough to acknowledge that he was lucid, before going under again.

_Hunger. Blood. Meat. Flesh. Red._

I hear you, friend. Oh God, do I hear you.

He suddenly jumped at the sound of something moving near him.

Very near.

_Someone? Something? Food? Meat?_

He scratched at the locker door and sniffed the air, desperate for a whiff of something alive.

Calm down, he scolded himself once the frenzy passed enough for him to think again, however briefly. Look at you, barking like a dog at the window. It was probably just another rat skittering across the floor. Nothing for you.

No, no this sound was different. It was moving something. Something heavy.

The door.

The door to the room.

Bog’s mind buzzed with excitement.

Something was near. Something was near!

Then there was another noise.

_Noise! Noise! Noise close! Something near!_

No, no he knew that noise.

Words.

Words meant people. People meant _meat._

Oh he could smell them now, smell how hot and red they smelled.

_Close. Please closer. Here. Here. Here._

He felt himself start to salivate.

_Yes. Please. Here. Come here. Open this door. Let me out. Let me at that red._

No. _No._

Something tried very hard to be thought.

No…he knew those words. Their…sound. That... _voice._

He knew that voice!

No. No. No. No. No. No.

Marianne.

No, he’d hurt her, he’d take her red! She could not come near!

He needed to make those sounds too. Word sounds. Tell her away. Make her away.

“Uh…uh!” he grunted.

She made more word sounds. Loud ones. She came closer.

_Yes, yes, yes, yes._

No, _no!_

Away!

He heard the heavy thing in front of the locker door being moved.

_Yes, yes, yes, yes, **yes!**_

No, no, no!

The door to the locker opened and the light practically burned Bog’s eyes after so much darkness, but he barely winced.

He stared, wide eyed at the face in front of him.

Marianne.

Her face, so clear after the blurred images of his faded memory, pulled his mind together like all the pieces were on tiny strings.

She’d found him. She hadn’t given up.

He could think again, but he could feel how paper-thin his control was, how desperately the other side of himself was trying to take over.

The moment of clarity brought thoughts to his head, and words to his mouth.

“Marianne…”he breathed, voice rough from disuse. “Marianne you…have to get away from me. Please, you have to get as far away from me as you can.”

“Bog!” Marianne cried, tears in her eyes. “Bog, it’s really you!”

No. No. She didn’t see. She didn’t understand.

_Blood. Meat. Flesh. Red. **Blood.**_

His hunger tried to steal the words from him again but he fought against it with all his might.

“Marianne you don’t…you have to…I can’t…control…”

She said something in response, but it just turned to noise to him.

He breathed in her scent. Oh she smelled so _red._

Anything that was left of Bog’s rational mind disappeared in that moment, forced out by a tidal wave of bloodlust and hunger.

He sprang at the red thing, teeth bared, longing to sink them into its warm flesh.

_Meat! Flesh! Red!_

He tackled the red thing to the ground but it managed to hold him back, away from it.

His jaws snapped and he let out a series of hisses and snarls, desperately trying to overpower his meal, but the red thing was strong and he’d grown weak from being caged so long. It threw him off of it and scrambled to its feet, making loud noises at him.

He got to his feet as well and charged it again, frantically grabbing with his arms and snapping his teeth.

It was so close, so close!

Then, a loud ‘pop’ sounded from nearby and something hit Bog. A tangled web of cord forced him to the ground. Weights held down the cords and pinned him there. He bit and scratched at the netting to no avail.

Another red thing joined the first and he struggled even harder.

_More red! More meat!_

The red things made noises at each other for a moment before facing him again.

He hissed loudly at them and they held something up towards him.

There was another ‘pop’ and everything went black.

\--

Bog awoke to the smell of blood. His eyes shot open and he looked frantically around for the source, hunger tearing at his mind and stomach.

He spotted the carcass of some kind of animal in front of him and immediately dove at it. He sunk his teeth into cold flesh as his mind screamed ‘Meat. Meat. Meat!’

He tore off chunks and hastily swallowed it down.

It wasn’t the red thing. It didn’t taste very red at all.

Meat should be hot and red, so red it was burning. This was a dark crimson, at best.

Still, it was something after having nothing for so, _so_ long. He gulped down pieces as quickly as his body would allow.

_Meat. Red. Flesh. Hunger. Food. Food._


	2. Dark Sienna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Chapter Title: "Inpatient"

_Then_

Bog King browsed through the aisles of a grocery store, shopping basket held in the crook of his arm. There was no need for a full cart, nothing he could afford was heavy enough to warrant one. Spaghetti was on sale, so he’d gotten two boxes and a jar of sauce.  He could last at least a week on that. A can of peas would lend an illusion of balance to his diet so he picked up two of those as well.

He gazed longingly at the fresh produce section. Fresh fruits and vegetables were more expensive and didn’t keep well so he usually avoided them, but the idea of a carton of fresh strawberries was very tempting.

His stomach growled.

It had been a long time since he’d eaten anything that wasn’t from a can or a cardboard box. Well, besides meat, that was. But that was another matter entirely.

A different kind of hunger tugged at his stomach at that thought.

 _Hush. I haven’t forgotten about you,_ he thought. _I’ll eat when I get home._

He’d been going a long time on too little meat. He’d been around long enough to know almost exactly how much he needed per day to keep a firm grasp on his sanity and he’d fallen short of that nearly every day for the past two weeks.

It wasn’t his fault. Business at the bar he worked for had been slow and slow business meant a smaller pay check.  Smaller pay check meant less meat had to last for longer. Portions had to be smaller to make it last him. But smaller portions would eventually take their toll.

He was physically weak all the time, but skimping brought it to a new level. He could barely make it up the stairs to his apartment the last two days.  It also affected the sharpness of his mind. His head felt like it was in a fog. Finding words was harder, on the rare occasion he spoke to anyone, it took longer than it should have for him to make sense of situations, and everything just came slower to him.

It was nowhere near the point of interfering with his self-control. He was irresponsible, maybe, but not insane. He’d go without everything else before he ever let it get to that point. Right now he just felt like he hadn’t slept in a day or so.

Probably didn’t help that he hadn’t slept well the past week. Hunger made his dreams worse.

He’d pick up some meat from the butcher tomorrow. He had enough to last him for tonight, if just barely. Assuming the butcher didn’t screw him over too badly price-wise, he might be able to make up for some of his sparser days. He remembered when he was a kid and you could buy raw meat right at the grocery store, but it was far too valuable a commodity now to just have it out in the open. Too desperately needed by too many people.

He chose the self-checkout lane to buy his paltry amount of groceries to avoid the possibility of a disapproving or disgusted stare from a cashier. It was easier to just avoid people whenever possible. Easier than having to purposefully ignore the look of discomfort humans tended to sport when they looked at him.  

Safer too. There were a lot of people who would take it as their civic duty to confront or harass a zombie, especially one looking as half-starved as he did right now.

It took a few tries to get the machine take his crumpled bills and a few moments to fish out enough change from his wallet to reach the total cost, but he managed to buy his food without incident.

He yawned widely as he stepped into the parking lot, his eyes closing for just a moment when

WHAM

Something, or someone, collided directly into him, nearly knocking him off his feet.

“Oof!” squeaked a high-pitched voice. A multitude of crashing sounds accompanied the noise.

Bog’s eyes shot back open to see a small, blonde haired young woman, smacked into his chest. The force of her impact had knocked one of the packed grocery bags she held out of her grasp and the contents had spilled out onto the asphalt. The woman was a tiny, spritely thing with tufts of blonde hair sticking out in all directions. It was a good thing she was so small, otherwise she’d have knocked Bog flat on his back in his weakened state.

Bog took an immediate step back.

“Oh I’m so sorry!” said the woman. “I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry.”

She knelt down and started trying to wrangle her escaping groceries back into the bag.

Bog stopped a runaway can from rolling away with his foot and knelt down to pick it up. He held it out to the woman.

“Here,” he said.

“Oh, thanks so much!” the woman said, reaching for the can. “I swear I’m as clumsy as my sister somet--“

She gasped suddenly and pulled her hand back, eyes going wide.

“Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed.

Bog followed her line of sight to his hand.

To his identification bracelet.

He scowled and dropped the can, standing abruptly.

“Sorry,” he said, caustically, and turned to walk away.

He grit his teeth. It’s not as if he wasn’t used to this kind of reaction by now, but most humans at least tried for the _illusion_ of courtesy, instead of openly gawking at him. He cursed himself for being foolish enough to think she’d accept his help.

“No, wait!” the woman exclaimed. 

She hurriedly scooped the rest of her groceries into her bag.

“Wait, you don’t understand!” she said, grabbing his arm.

Bog pulled his arm roughly out of her grasp and turned sharply on his heel to face her.

“I think I understand just fine,” he hissed. “and, if you don’t mind, I have better things to do than listen to some human explain to me how they’re not ‘one of those’ humans.”

“No, it’s not like that. My name is Dawn Fairfield and I…hang on I have it here somewhere.” The woman patted down her coat, searching for something. She put her bags down and fished her wallet out of the top pocket and pulled a small, off-white business card out of it.

“My name is Dawn Fairfield and I’m a representative for C.U.R.E. The Center for Undead Research and Embetterment.” She held the card out to him and he took it more out of reflex than anything.

“We’re looking for volunteers to come in and--“

“Not interested.”

‘Dawn’ blinked. “But…but I didn’t…”

“I’m not ‘coming in’ to anywhere with some human woman I don’t even know. I didn’t die yesterday. I know what happens to zombies who are lured out to some secluded location by ‘well meaning’ humans.”

“It’s not like that at all!” Dawn insisted. “We’re just looking for some local undead to come in and answer some questions for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of the undead condition.”

“Of course you are,” Bog said. “And I’m going home to my private castle to eat caviar off a silver platter.”

“It’s the truth!”

“Even if I believed you, I have more important things to do than waste my time talking to some self-righteous humans who think they’re doing me some kind of charity,” Bog spat.

“Thanks for the card, though,” he added, with a sneer, and walked away, leaving the young woman gawking behind him.

 

\---

_Now_

“Marianne he’s gone. Just look at him.”

“He’s not gone, Dawn! He spoke to me! He said my name!”

“Marianne, he tried to _eat_ you! If Bog was really still in there, he would never try to hurt you.”

“He may have lost control but it’s still him.”

“Does _that_ look like the Bog you know?”

Marianne looked through the small two way mirror window to the holding cell they’d put Bog in after bring him back to the Center. They’d put half a butchered cow in there with him and he clearly appreciated the gesture.

Marianne had hoped that eating would bring him back to himself, but so far it only seemed to be proving Dawn’s point.

Bog attacked the carcass with animal-like ferocity, tearing at it with his teeth and stripping off chunks of flesh. His face was coated with red.

He didn’t look like the Bog she knew at all.

She’d seen him submit partially to that frenzy when he ate his daily dose of raw meat to keep his sanity in check, but it was always quick, only lasting a moment, then he’d be Bog again, looking embarrassed and ashamed like he always did. He always looked at her as if this was the time she finally would be horrified by him and cast him away. But she’d just smile at him and hand him a wash cloth.

This was something different.

This Bog was relishing in tearing the cow apart. He completely forwent the use of his hands, ripping and shredding with his teeth alone.

It was odd, as well, to see Bog with a beard. He usually never let his facial hair grow out to more than stubble. Naturally he wouldn’t have been able to shave while trapped, so it had grown out to a patchy, scraggly coating over his chin and cheeks and his hair had grown out significantly.

Feral zombies’ hair and nails stopped growing so, judging by the length of Bog’s hair, beard and fingernails, it had taken him quite some time to finally turn. He must have been sane and conscious for most of the time he was trapped.

Marianne wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

“Zombies have been known to go feral in as little as a week,” Dawn said. “He was trapped there for over two _months.”_

“I know what I heard, Dawn,” Marianne said, resolutely. “Just ask Sunny, he was there too!”

“Sunny said he didn’t hear anything.”

“Well then it was just too quiet. He was whispering. He spoke to me!”

“I love Boggy too but even if, by some miracle, he managed to hold out all that time and speak to you, he’s clearly gone now,” Dawn said. “Think about what’s best for him. Do you really think he’d want to live like this? You must have discussed the possibility of this happening…”

“It’s not like that!” Marianne insisted. “That was only if he was completely gone. He’s still there, I know it!”

“Marianne…”

“And, isn’t this what this place was made for? Isn’t this what we’ve been preparing to do this whole time?”

“You know as well as I do that we’re nowhere near that point yet.”

“Well now we are. We have to be. If we’re going to try to help anyone, shouldn’t it be Bog?”

“You’re too close to this,” Dawn said. “It’d be too painful.”

“I can get through to him, Dawn. I’m sure of it. Please…just let me try.”

“Try what? We have no plan for this.”

“Have him put out again so we can clean him up a bit,” Marianne said. “Then I’ll try talking with him.”

\---

Darkness.

Light.

Bog opened his eyes. He didn’t remember closing them.

There had been meat. Then it was dark. Now the meat was gone.

He sat up from the wall he had been leaned up against and sniffed the air. He couldn’t smell any food but he did catch a whiff of something odd. He sniffed a few more times to try to identify its source when he suddenly realized it was coming from him.

Or, not him. Something on him.

He looked down at himself and hissed with confusion. It was different. Different look. Different smell.

Different…c…c…cloth. Different cloth. On him.

He bunched the cloth wrapping around his body in his fists and sniffed it. It didn’t smell like him anymore. It smelled like chemicals and nothing.

He hissed and spat at the different cloth. He did not like it. Not at all.

He took an experimental bite at the collar of the cloth and tore at it, ripping it slightly. It tasted like nothing, too.

Bog’s head shot up and the cloth fell from his mouth when he heard a noise from the side of him.

Noise.

Metal.

Door.

Door. Door. Door!

He saw the metal door of the room begin to swing open and the scent of something _very red_ wafted in.

He lunged forward only to be stopped short by something yanking at his throat and wrists. He became aware, at that moment, that heavy, metal things were hooked around his wrists and neck. They connected to the wall behind him and wouldn’t let him move more than a foot or so.

He tried to stand only to be thwarted again by the metal things. He snarled and pulled at his bindings but they did not budge.

The door opened all the way and a red thing stepped through the doorway.

Bog lunged forward again. The metal things clanged loudly as they held him back once more. They dug into his skin as he struggled against them.

The red thing was so very red.

So blindingly, burningly, mouth-wateringly red. He needed it. He _needed it._ He needed to take it into himself until that redness lit up the cold blackness in him and made him glow from the inside out.

He hissed loudly in frustration and desperation. His jaws snapped viciously.

_Flesh. Blood. Meat._

The red thing brought something with it that it placed well out of his reach and sat on, then made soft noises at him.

He pulled harder against his restraints but all it accomplished was digging the metal further into his skin.

It was so close! If he could just _get at it!_

More soft noises from the red thing.

_So close so close!_

Bog felt the metal around his wrists begin to cut into his skin as he struggled and the smell of blood filled the air.

_Blood. Blood. Blood._

The red thing made some loud sounds but Bog was far too far into his frenzy to pay attention. His fighting against his restraints became almost frantic and he could feel something cool and wet running down his hands.

The red thing stood and reached for something at its side and held it up at him.

Then, suddenly the world was swallowed back up into darkness.

\--

Marianne lowered her stun gun and looked at Bog’s unconscious form. She sighed. It’s not as though she had hoped he would suddenly snap out of it and be back to normal, but she’d thought maybe she could get even the slightest glimmer of recognition out of him.

No such luck it seemed. Whatever small amount of control he’d retained to speak to her when she found him in that abandoned factory had clearly been lost now.

It was eerie how utterly still he was. He didn’t breathe and not a single muscle twitched or moved. Unconscious like this, he was practically indistinguishable from a corpse.

Well, from _normal_ corpse. The kind of corpse that didn’t come back to life and try to kill people.

It was hard to believe he could be so completely motionless and calm looking after only moments ago being in a frenzy of bloodlust.

He’d fought against his restraints so hard trying to get at her that he’d hurt himself. His wrist shackles dripped with blood from where they’d cut into his flesh.

Marianne carefully unlocked the shackles and removed them from his wrists and neck, then unhooked the chains they were connected to from a metal ring protruding from the wall behind him. There would be no point in him being chained up once there was no one else was in the room with him.

She knew she should be nervous so close to him. If he suddenly woke up, she wouldn’t have a chance. Yet she couldn’t really bring herself to be afraid of him. Now that they’d cleaned him up and given him a shave, he looked so much like the Bog she knew and loved. It made it hard to remember that it wasn’t. That this Bog did not love her, and would kill her the first opportunity he got.

She gathered up the shackles and chains in her arms and went to the door. It only opened from the outside, to ensure that anything within wouldn’t be able to get out on when it wasn’t supposed to.

She heard the door unlock and she took a step back to let it swing open, then stepped through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The acronym C.U.R.E. was a 100% complete accident. I came up with the full name first then realized what it spelled.
> 
> Also, it's worth mentioning that Bog's face is not covered in blood. There's very little blood left in a butchered animal after being slaughtered. My options in describing it were either "myoglobin" which is too technical or "meat juice" which is just unusable for many reasons so i just went with "red"


	3. Claret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Chapter Title: "Meat Cute"

_Then_

“This is absolutely ridiculous!” Bog cried. “You can’t be serious!”

“Listen, pal,” said the butcher, standing on the opposite side of the linoleum countertop of his shop. “You asked what the price of chuck was and I told you.”

“You can’t possibly charge twenty dollars for two pounds of chuck meat.” Bog said.

He’d gone to a different butcher than he normally did. He usually rotated between three or four different places in different parts of the city. Going to any one shop too often usually lead to the prices being hiked up.  Butchers could sell their product for practically however much they wanted nowadays. If one zombie wouldn’t pay a certain price, another would. It’s not as though they could just go without until the price came down, and the government certainly wasn’t going to implement any kind of regulation.

Bog’s usual places had become a little too familiar with his patronage and had brought the price out of his range. He’d hoped a new place would offer him a better deal, but no such luck.

“It’s supply and demand,” the butcher explained in a condescending tone. “This last shipment was slimmer than usual. That drives up the price.”

“To _ten dollars_ a pound? That’s beyond supply and demand,” Bog hissed. “This is extortion!”

“If you think you can get a better price somewhere else, you’re welcome to try.”

“And if I can’t? I don’t have that kind of money. You _know_ what will happen to me if I don’t get this!” Bog exclaimed, holding up his right hand to display his identification bracelet.

“Your money problems are not my fault,” said the butcher. “If it’s so important to you, maybe you should have made it more of a priority, financially. I can’t give a special discount to everybody with one of those bracelets who’s short for cash. I’d go out of business.”

“This _bracelet_ is the only reason you’re charging me such a ridiculous price!” Bog roared. “Don’t think I didn’t notice what you charged the people before me!”

Bog panted with rage. His mind felt more fogged than ever. He could smell the fresh meat in the back of the shop and it was driving him mad. He was so close, yet impossibly far. His stomach churned painfully and he let out a raspy exhale.

The butcher’s eyes narrowed and he scowled.

“If you don’t like the way I run my business, you can go somewhere else,” he said, coldly.

Bog tried to re-collect himself. He couldn’t leave without meat. This was the last place that was close enough to walk to and he had no other mode of transportation. If he didn’t get something now, he’d have to go without at least until tomorrow, if not longer. There was no reason to think that anywhere else would lower their price by then. It could be days. He couldn’t do that.  He’d already been playing with fire going on so little for the last two weeks. Days with nothing could leave him too weak to even leave his apartment, and then he’d be all but doomed.

He swallowed his pride.

“ _Please,_ ” he begged, voice soft. “Please I need this.”

“I’m not a charity.”

Then, without warning, a hand slapped down a twenty dollar bill on the counter between the two men.

“It’s on me.”

Bog turned to see the source of the voice and the owner of the hand.

A young woman, maybe in her early thirties, with short, windswept looking brown hair and strikingly golden-brown eyes stood beside him. He hadn’t even noticed her come in, no matter sneak up right next to him.  It was scary how little of his surroundings registered when he was this out of it.

Her clothes looked well-made and suggested wealth. She didn’t look like someone who belonged in grungy butcher’s shop in a poor part of town.

“In fact,” the woman continued, pulling out another crisp-looking bill from her wallet, “Make it four.”

For a moment, both Bog and the butcher just stared at her in shock and confusion.  The butcher looked reluctant, but began to get what she’d requested.

Bog’s foggy brain was still trying to piece together exactly what was happening. Someone he didn’t know was buying him forty dollars’ worth of meat? That didn’t make any sense. He had to be misunderstanding it. Nobody would do something like that.

Unless there was a catch.

Bog’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and he scowled.

He said nothing as the butcher cut and wrapped the meat. The butcher put the wrapped meat into a plastic bag and made a point of handing it to the woman and not to Bog, giving him a dirty look, as if Bog had somehow planned this just to spite him.

“Thanks,” said the woman, in a sweet tone that sounded forced.

She handed the bag to Bog and made a subtle nodding motion towards the door with her head.

Bog’s already impressive scowl increased. Was she serious?

“Have a nice day,” the woman said, tone still sounded forcedly sweet, then turned and walked out of the shop.

Bog glanced at the butcher, who glared at him, then glanced at the door. Clearly the woman wanted him to follow, but for what reason he didn’t know and it made him wary. He could wait here and hope she gave up and left, but that was unlikely and, besides, he didn’t want to hang around near a man who clearly disliked him and had access to a multitude of knives. There was no chance of the butcher letting him sneak out the back door, either.

He took a deep breath and exited the shop.

The woman was waiting outside, arms crossed.

“Jeez, what an ass, huh?” she said “I’m Marianne, by the way.”

“What do you want?” Bog asked, flatly, in no state of mind for small talk.

“What do you mean?” Marianne asked, not doing an entirely convincing job of sounding like she wasn’t expecting the question.

“Don’t play coy with me!” Bog said. “What is this about?”

“Does there have to be a reason to be generous?”

 Bog scoffed.

“Oh, yes, of course. Because it’s completely normal to buy someone four pounds of raw meat like it was a drink at a…a…uh…um…”

Bog struggled to find the word.

“A…bar?” Marianne supplied.

“I knew that!” Bog snapped, face flushing.

 _Forgetting a three letter word? You let yourself go too far,_ he scolded himself. He just wanted to go home and eat and clear this awful fog from his brain, not play mind games with some human woman.

“What. Do. You. Want?” he demanded.

Marianne sighed. “Okay. Okay. Listen. I’m from C.U.R.E. You met my sister yesterday--”

“Oh no, not another one!” Bog cried. “I told you people already, I’m not interested!”

“If you’d just _consider--“_

“There’s nothing to consider! Even if I remotely trusted you before, you _followed_ me and now you’re trying to bribe me!” Bog said, accusingly.

“I didn’t ‘follow’ you, first of all,” Marianne said. “I happened to be nearby.”

“’Happen to be nearby?’” Bog sneered. “You mean hanging around butcher’s shops in rundown areas waiting for some poor, desperate zombie to come along who you can buy off? And I hope you don’t think I’m giving this back!”

He clutched the plastic bag close to his chest.

“No, that was a gift,” Marianne said.

“Well then, I think we’re done here,” Bog said.

He turned and began to walk away.

“And don’t follow me!” he added.

“I was _hoping_ that it would be a show of good faith!” Marianne said.

“Ha! You’ll need to pay a bit more than forty dollars for _that,_ ” Bog said, snidely.

“How about fourteen hundred?”

Bog stopped dead in his tracks.

“…what?”

“You come in for a few hours for seven days starting tomorrow,” Marianne said. “Answer some questions. Let us run some small tests. At the end of each day, I give you two hundred dollars. Cash.”

“…define ‘small tests’.” Bog asked, without turning around.

“An MRI, some blood tests, a basic physical.”

Bog considered this. Fourteen hundred dollars could buy an awful lot of chuck steak. An _awful lot._ Assuming anything this woman said was true, of course, which it very well may not be.

If he said yes, he ran the risk of being lured into a trap. If he refused, he ran the risk of not being able to afford meat. A quick death verses a slow one.

God, why did his head have to be so fogged? He couldn’t think straight. All he could think about was the meat in the bag held in his hand and about all the meat that a thousand and four hundred dollars could buy.

After a long moment he turned back to Marianne.

“Make it three hundred a day,” he said.

“Deal. Shake on it?”

Marianne held out her hand.

Bog hesitated, then put his hand in hers.

“Marianne,” Marianne said, as she shook.

“Huh?”

“My name. It’s Marianne.”

“You…said that already.”

Marianne released his hand and gave him a small look as if he was missing something.

“…and you are?” she prompted, after a moment.

“Oh,” Bog said, understanding now. “Bog.”

“Bob?” Marianne asked, eyebrow raised.

Bog grimaced.

“ _Bog,”_ he corrected. “With a ‘G’.”

“Your name is…Bog? B-O-G, Bog?”

Bog’s grimace turned to a scowl.

“Okay,” Marianne said, raising her hands up in front of her in a gesture of surrender. “Bog, then.”

 ---

Bog flipped the plain looking business card back and forth in his hand. The woman, Marianne, had given him a new one. He’d already thrown away the one the younger woman had given him the day before.

He sat at the small table in the cramped kitchen of his apartment, studying the benign looking piece of paper. His head was a bit clearer, since he’d eaten the moment he’d gotten home. The walk back had seemed endless and he’d only been able to hold himself back from sneaking into a side alley and taking a bite of his newly acquired meal because he knew he’d never be able to stop himself from eating far more than he needed to or should.

Though, with this amount, he barely had to think about portioning. He’d been able to eat over twice as much as his normal daily amount and he would be more than able to make up for his skimping. His sated hunger had already begun chasing the fog from his mind, but the clearness of thought also brought with it a growing dread.

What had he agreed to? Being a lab rat for some organization that might not even actually exist? He didn’t know what he had been thinking.

No, that wasn’t true. He knew _exactly_ what he had been thinking.

Which is that he desperately needed that money. Twenty one hundred dollars would feed him for months. He might even be able to buy something fresh for once. Now that his supernatural hunger was satisfied, the idea of fresh carton of strawberries once again seemed very appealing. 

He inspected the business card closely. It seemed legitimate enough. The words “Center for Undead Research and Embetterment” were printed in clear, golden letters.

Bog was fairly certain “embetterment” was not a real word.

Marianne had written some directions on how to get there on the back of the card. Bog didn’t have a GPS and he couldn’t afford a smart phone with one built in.

The places wasn’t too far out of town, but far enough to be worrying.

His gut churned with something other than hunger for once. He prided himself on being careful and cautious. Now he was throwing all caution to the wind in a desperate grab for cash. Not even that much cash, in the grand scheme of things. How far he’d fallen.

But what choice did he have? If business didn’t pick up at the bar and no butcher would lower their prices, he could lose everything. If he went too long without meat, his mind and body would get too weak for him to work and he’d lose his job. Without that income he’d have no way to support himself. He’d lose his apartment.

His mother would take him in without hesitation, he knew that much, but she couldn’t afford to provide for him, though she would certainly try. All it would do was ensure he dragged her down with him.

What choice did he have?

\--

“He’s not coming,” Marianne moaned. “I’m so stupid.”

“He’s only a half an hour late,” Dawn said. “Maybe there was traffic.”

“He took the meat and just took off,” Marianne said. “Why did I think this would work? Everyone thinks we’re either frauds or necrophobes in disguise. The Center can’t get on its feet until we have some research subjects and, if we can’t get on our feet, Dad’s going to call us a lost cause and cut the funding.”

“Someone will come in eventually,” Dawn said, encouragingly. “It’s not like this guy was exactly the most likely candidate to begin with. Why did you even try again with him?”

“I don’t know. I just saw him there and I knew it must be the guy you described. You’re right, he’s got a ‘look’. I figured I’d give it another shot.”

“Hey you guys?” called Sunny from the front room. “You might want to see this.”

Marianne and Dawn went into the front entrance room where Sunny was.

“Is that your guy?” Sunny pointed out the glass front doors of the center at a dark shape in the distance.

Marianne squinted and could make out a basic humanoid shape.

“Is he walking?” Dawn asked. “In this heat?”

“Maybe his car broke down.” Sunny suggested.

Marianne checked that her keys were in her pocket and started towards the door.

“I’m going out to get him.”

\--

The man, Bog King, tensed and looked like he was getting ready to bolt when Marianne pulled up alongside him on the road.

She rolled down the passenger side window.

“Mr. King?” she asked. “What are you doing out here?”

Bog seemed to relax marginally when he saw who it was.

“I…my apologies for being late. It took me longer than I thought to get here,” he said.

“Wait…did you walk all the way here?” Marianne asked, dumbstruck.

“Yes?”

“We’re five miles out of the city!”

Bog folded his arms.

“Well, it’s not like there was a bus stop out here or something,” he huffed.

“You could have driven.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“You could have told me that. I would have picked you up.”

“I didn’t need to be picked up.”

Marianne shook her head and leaned across the passenger seat to open the door.

“Get in,” she said.

Bog eyed the car warily.

“It’ll be another twenty minutes before you can walk all the way to the center. Get in,” Marianne repeated.

Bog hesitated a moment, then climbed into the car. He had to fold up his ridiculously long limbs to fit in her small sports car and he had to bend his neck to keep his head from hitting the ceiling.

Marianne put the car into gear and swung it around, heading back towards the center.

She glanced at her passenger out of the corner of her eye as she drove.

He was wearing the same tattered black coat she’d seen him in the day before, paired with a black turtle neck and a faded pair of black jeans.

“Aren’t you uncomfortable in all that black in this heat?” Marianne asked, more to break the tense silence than anything.

“Not particularly,” Bog responded, flatly.

So much for sparking conversation.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“Mind if I put some music on?” Marianne asked, at last.

Bog shrugged, still looking tense.

Marianne pressed the power button on the car stereo and it automatically began to play the CD inside.

Bog’s eyebrows raised as the music started.

“Elvis?” he remarked.

“You a fan of the king?” Marianne asked.

“ _I never looked for trouble, but I never ran. I don’t take no orders from no kinda man.”_ Bog sung along to the music. “I have pretty much everything he’s ever recorded.”

“Color me surprised,” said Marianne. “I had you pegged as more of the kind of guy who listened to bands whose logos look like a bunch of branches thrown into a heap.”

“What, death metal?” Bog said. “Never been much of a fan, to be honest. I prefer music that you can understand the lyrics of. It’s easier to sing to.”

Bog winced, seeming to have said more than he meant to.

“You sing?” Marianne asked.

Bog cleared his throat.

“Y..yes. Well, no. I mean…not professionally.” He paused. “Well, not anymore, anyway.”

Bog shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he saw the slyly inquisitive look that Marianne was giving him.

“I may have…been a member of a band,” Bog relented.

“A band?” Marianne asked, not dropping her sly look.

“It was nothing big. Mostly just for fun,” Bog said. “We did small gigs here and there, you know?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, awkwardly.

“You were the lead singer, I assume?” Marianne asked.

“Yes. I played the guitar a bit too.”

“What was the name?”

Bog grimaced.

“Come on, it can’t be that bad,” Marianne prodded.

“ _All The King’s Men.”_ Bog mumbled.

Marianne laughed.

“With you as the ‘King’?” Marianne said. “Clever.”

“That’s a word for it I guess.”

“Why? What would you call it?”

“Narcissistic and corny, at best,” Bog huffed.

“Whose idea was it?”

“Mine, naturally.”

Marianne laughed again and she swore she saw Bog let slip a tiny grin out of the corner of her eye.

“I think it’s a great name,” Marianne said. “I wish I could have seen you preform. You certainly seem to have the voice for it.”

“Oh, I…” Bog cleared his throat again. “Thank…thank you.”

“So why’d you break up?” Marianne asked.

Suddenly Bog went very still beside her.

“I died,” he said, flatly.

“Oh.”

Bog sneered.

“Kind of hard to keep a band together after that,” he said, dryly.

“I’m sorry,” Marianne said.

“Not your fault.”

Marianne didn’t know how to reply and they spent the last few minutes of the ride back to the center in silence save for the music from the car’s speakers.

 

\---

_Now_

Darkness.

Light.

Bog opened his eyes, again with no memory of closing them. After taking a moment to process his surroundings, he realized that the red thing was gone.

He glanced around the room, but there was no sign of it. A few sniffs of the air confirmed that there was no food to be found anywhere near him, but he could pick up the faintest whiff of blood. It smelled cold and faded. Not from anything alive.

Sitting up from the wall, he sniffed again, then stood.

The act of standing triggered a faint memory. Something else was different. Something that had to do with standing up…or not standing up. Something that had been before the darkness but now wasn’t after. Something that had to do with his hands…

He began to glance down to look, then started.

His hands!

Both his wrists were wrapped in white cloth.

Bog hissed loudly.

This white cloth was new. It was different. It was on him but it was not him and he _did not_ like it.

He immediately began to try to tear it off with his teeth when, suddenly, a loud noise sounded. A word noise.

Words meant people. People meant meat.

_Red. Flesh. Meat._

Bog’s head swiveled around rapidly as he tried to discern the source of the sound. He couldn’t see anything. There was nothing in this room at all. Word noises with no red things to make them. He didn’t like it.

Growling low, he went back to trying to chew off the white cloth around his wrists.

The word sound came again, even louder. It was a sharp, short sound, followed by a few softer ones. There was something tinny or metallic about the sounds.

Bog hissed at the sound, annoyed by the fact that it sounded like food but was, as far as he could tell, inedible.

Angrily, he went back to the cloth.

A third, loud word noise sounded and Bog snarled in earnest. He stood and began to search the room more thoroughly for anything that could be making the noise, forgetting, for the moment, about the cloth.

The walls of the room were cement, aside from a metal door and doorframe which were set into the wall. He ran his hands along the edges, but his fingers found no purchase. He scratched the metal, but it didn’t even leave a mark. His finger nails were short and blunt and he couldn’t remember if that had been different before.

The door had a hole in it, a little below his eye level, and Bog gazed inside. He took a startled step back as he saw something staring directly at him from the other side. It looked like a red thing. He hadn’t even noticed it so close to him. He hadn’t smelled anything red. In fact he hadn’t smelled anything at all. He still couldn’t. It was clearly something that moved like it was alive, but didn’t have any smell.

He hissed and the red thing that was not red hissed too. Except Bog couldn’t hear it. He reached towards the hole to try to grab it and it did the same but, at the place where their hands should have touched, Bog didn’t feel flesh, only smooth glass. He tried again, and again was met with nothing but a cool, flat surface. Pushing against it did nothing either. Hissing, he scratched repeatedly at it, blunt nails sliding uselessly down the surface.

Both he and the not red red thing took a step back, perplexed.

He studied the thing for a moment.

Immediately his eye was drawn to the red covering over its chest and torso. It was the color of meat, but didn’t actually seem to be it. Letting his eyes wander, he saw pale, sickly looking skin that clung much too tightly to the bone. This red thing looked like it would not be good to eat. Not that he wouldn’t, if he could figure out a way to get at it. Blue eyes stared unblinkingly back at him.

 A silent and scentless red thing that wasn’t even red and that he couldn’t touch. It was a puzzle.

But the red looking thing didn’t actually smell red and he couldn’t seem to get at it so it was a puzzle whose solution would not result in a meal and was therefore irrelevant.

He abandoned the red thing that wasn’t red and set about looking around the rest of the room, long since having forgotten why he was searching it in the first place.

There wasn’t much to search. The room was completely empty save for a strip of florescent lighting above his head that was protected by metal bars. The room was small, but not too small. Not small like the very small place. The place he had been. The place where…where…

Bog clutched at his head as a thought tried to worm its way into his mind.

Something had happened there, in that small place. Or…something had stopped happening. Something that was trying to be remembered.

But remembering hurt. It brought flashes of feelings he didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand.

So Bog shook his head violently to shake the thought away.

No boxes. No small places. It didn’t matter now.

 

\--

“He looked for me.”

“What?”

“He looked for me,” Marianne repeated. “He noticed I was gone and he looked for me.”

“So?” Dawn asked.

“So he has object permanence. He understands that things exist even when he can’t see them.”

Marianne was furiously jotting down notes into her observation notebook as she watched Bog through the window of his room.

No formal research had ever been done on the behavior and mental capacity of feral zombies. Some clinical tests had been done shortly after the initial outbreak of zombification twenty years ago but they had mostly been tests on how to best disable or destroy them, along with some cursory attempts to cure them through some kind of antidote.

Once the fact that infected persons could prevent themselves from going feral by eating raw meat came to light, along with the development of stun guns, all research on zombies, feral or otherwise, had come to a halt. Well, almost all, anyway. The danger had passed and the majority of the population was comfortable enough ignoring the plight of zombies as long as it didn’t affect them directly.

Bog’s loss of humanity, as horrible as it was, was admittedly an unprecedented opportunity to study a feral zombie up close and Marianne owed it to him and everyone else not to let her emotions prevent her from taking advantage of it and learning as much as she could.

They’d never been able to bring in a feral zombie to the center before. Most zombies that went feral were killed in short order to put them out of their misery. Those who weren’t were generally hidden away, caged and kept like animals by well-intentioned family and friends who couldn’t bear to let them go, but generally didn’t have the knowledge or resources to properly care for them.

It was like keeping a tiger or lion in your home. Even taking what one saw as every precaution, slip ups would happen, and one slip up was all it took when dealing with such dangerous creatures. All too often people were infected or killed by loved ones gone feral who they’d attempted to care for.

Those who did harbor feral zombies like that tended to keep it secret and were generally wary of people claiming to want to help or study, accustomed to scam artists or necrophobes out to con them or find an excuse to put a bullet in their charge’s head.

Finding a “living” feral zombie was difficult. Convincing their caretaker to let them be taken away for study had proven completely impossible.

Now they had their very first feral test subject. Coincidentally, in the form of their very first test subject in general.

Marianne scrawled hasty notes in her notebook about object permanence and reaction to stimuli.

“He responded when I yelled at him over the intercom,” she said, more to herself than Dawn. “He stopped chewing on his gauze. His actions may be able to be altered by positive and negative reinforcement.”

“So you think he could be…trained?” Dawn asked, sounding uncomfortable with the idea.

“Not ‘trained’ like a dog or something,” Marianne said. “I just mean ‘guided towards or away from certain actions’.”

Dawn seemed unconvinced and Marianne had to admit that the idea did sound uncomfortably like training Bog like an animal.

“Just maybe enough so I can be in the room with him without him hurting himself trying to attack me,” Marianne said.

“What will you do once you get to that point?” Dawn asked. “What difference would it make to just be in the room with him?”

“I...I’m working on that part.”

Suddenly a voice cried out from down the hall.

“Dr. Marianne! Dr. Marianne!”

Two figures came running down the hall towards Dawn and Marianne.

“Steph? Thane?” Dawn exclaimed.

“It isn’t true, right?” asked Thane, voice sounding desperate.

He was a short, thin man with crooked teeth and wide eyes. Accompanying him was a widely built woman with a buzz cut.

“What they said in the lobby,” Thane continued. “It isn’t true, right? He isn’t…he didn’t…”

Both Thane and the woman, Steph, looked to Marianne with pleading eyes.

Marianne didn’t know what to say.

“I…I’m sorry,” she said, softly.

Thane’s eyes immediately welled with tears and his whole face crumpled.

“I…I knew when he was gone so…so long that there was a…a chance that he would…I just didn’t…I thought…”

“We just never figured it could never really happen to him,” Steph finished, as Thane’s sentence was consumed by sobs.

“I…I think we all sort of felt that way,” Marianne said.

“But you’re going to help him, right?” Thane asked, once he was able to regain some measure of composure. “That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

Marianne glanced at Dawn for a split second, then back to Thane.

“We’re…going to do whatever we can for him,” she said.

“Can we see him?” Steph asked.

Marianne stepped out of the way of the door and gestured to the small, round window.

“It’s a two way mirror,” she explained. “He can’t see you.”

Steph and Thane peered through the porthole-like window into Bog’s room. Inside, Bog was pacing around, looking agitated.

“What’s that on his wrists?” Thane asked.

“It’s gauze,” Marianne explained. “He hurt his wrists. I wrapped up his wounds a bit.”

“Wait, you’ve been _in there_ with him?” Steph exclaimed, sounding alarmed.

“Only when he’s chained up or unconscious,” Marianne said.  “We knock him out with a stun gun before anyone goes in.”

“That’s still dangerous!” Thane cried. “What if he woke up? You could get bitten!”

Then, Thane’s eyes seemed to light up.

“Let us do it!” he said. “We could go in there while he’s unconscious!”

“I can’t ask you to take that kind of risk,” Marianne said.

Steph raised up her right hand, where a metal bracelet dangled from her wrists.

“It’s not like we can get any more infected than we already are,” she said with a shrug.

“That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still be dangerous for you,” Marianne insisted. “Just because you’re already infected doesn’t mean he couldn’t still kill you.”

“Listen, we want to help,” Steph said. “BK meant- _means-_ a lot to us.”

Marianne looked at their faces, lit up with the idea of being able to do something, anything, to help their friend.

“Okay,” she relented.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super unhappy with this but here it is.


End file.
